The Iowa State University Library is hosting several workshops for instructors interested in open education this semester. Whether you are just getting started exploring OER for your courses or you want to explore new pedagogies for engaging your students, there is something for you this year. Want to register for one or more of these opportunities? Check them out and register now on the Uiversity Library events calendar. 

Descriptions for the open education-focused programming is provided below:

[Webinar]

Wednesday, February 15, 2023 2:00pm - 3:00pm CST

As partners of the Iowa Open Education Action Team (Iowa OER), ISU has access to webinars, services, and peer expertise from across the state. Check out these recent webinars and blog posts from Iowa OER to learn more about topics of interest to instructors like you!

To help faculty interested in adapting or publishing open textbooks learn more about the software and services available to support them at Iowa State, we are supporting two online workshops this spring:

Tuesday, 03 May 2022 from 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm

During this workshop, attendees will receive:

Did you miss the first Iowa OER Summit last week? Don't worry! The recordings of all sessions are now available free and open on YouTube.

You can access the recordings through the Iowa OER Summit YouTube channel.

Want to learn more about OER on a statewide scale? You can visit the Iowa OER website to learn more, read blog posts, and (if you're interested) join the listserv to talk to others about this topic!

The Iowa OER Summit is a virtual conference for educators, administrators, and support staff from across the state of Iowa to come together and discuss their work with OER.

Whether you're interested in adopting OER for your courses, co-creating OER with your students, or making the case for your OER work to count toward your promotion & tenure process, there will be something here for you!

Join us Tuesday, March 1 through Thursday, March 3 from 12-4pm for an action-packed set of talks and panels. Registration is free.

The ISU Open & Affordable Education Committee is pleased to announce that the request for proposals for the Miller Open Education Mini-Grant Program is now open for submissions for the 2022-2023 academic year. The program is co-sponsored by the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost (SVPP), the University Library, and the Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching (CELT). They will be awarded in amounts ranging from $500 to $5,000.

This spring, Open Access Librarian Abbey Elder will be hosting three workshops for faculty interested in learning more about OER or creating OER themselves. All workshops will be provided via Zoom. An overview of the workshops is provided below: 

 Feb 23, 2022

 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

The Iowa Open Education Resources Team (Iowa OER) is now accepting proposals for the 2022 OER Summit. This call invites proposals for four types of concurrent presentations:

Libraries at Iowa State University, University of Iowa, and University of Northern Iowa are proud to announce that grants have been awarded to five faculty teams to support the creation of free, openly licensed course materials. This funding opportunity provides intensive training and support for faculty writing open textbooks or other materials to replace those that are expensive and more traditional.

In addition to saving students at ISU, UI, and UNI an estimated $308,000 per year, the new resources created through the 2021 Regents OER Grant Program prioritize equity, further reducing the cost of course materials and removing barriers inside and outside the classroom. The OERs are likely to be adopted at other institutions, expanding the impact and cost savings beyond Iowa Regent universities.

The Open & Affordable Education Committee at Iowa State University is one of many groups facilitating and supporting the use of open & affordable course materials in the state of Iowa. Another group we'd like to highlight is the Iowa Open Educational Resources Action Team (Iowa OER), a statewide group working to support the affordability of higher education for students in the state of Iowa. Iowa OER is a cross-institutional team with members from the Regents institutions, community colleges, private universities, and both the Iowa AEAs and the Iowa Department of Education.

Libraries at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa announce a joint funding opportunity for the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). This program is open to small teams of faculty, graduate students, and staff at any of the three public universities governed by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa.

If you want to incorporate more affordable course materials into your class, why not make them with your class? Open pedagogy is the process of working with students to showcase their learning by creating open content: podcasts, infographics, literature reviews… whatever works for your class! Collaborate with your students in the co-creation of course materials and share that work in the Digital Repository’s Open Educational Resources collection.

Unsure where to start? Check out our Open Pedagogy page for more information, or sign up for our summer workshop, Supporting Student-Centered Learning through Open Pedagogy! 

The Open Scholar Café is a virtual forum held each month for members of the Iowa State University community to meet and discuss open research and scholarship. A new topic will be discussed or presented during each session. The March 17 Open Scholar Café will be held from 9-10 a.m. and focus on Open Education projects and support available on campus. Come learn about the work that instructors at Iowa State have done to incorporate Open Educational Resources (OER) into their teaching and learn more about the open call for Miller Open Education Mini-Grant proposals.

Register to attend and browse future café topics on the Open Scholarship Services website.

A 2019 Miller Open Education Mini-Grant recipient, John Haughery has just published a journal article in the Journal of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering (JTMAE) about his adaptation and use of OER in the course TSM 363 at Iowa State.

This article was co-authored by Steven Olaniba, a Teaching & Research Assistant in the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department at Iowa State, with the support of Abbey Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at the Iowa State University Library. 

The PDF of the article can be accessed here: "The Effectiveness of Open Educational Resources to Improve Access and Learning in an Electricity Course"